


One Winter Morning

by rinthegreat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-War, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinthegreat/pseuds/rinthegreat
Summary: Keith wakes up too early because Lance wants to see the snow.





	One Winter Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jillibeeean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillibeeean/gifts).



> this is a gift fic to [jilli-bean](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/) from an exchange we did! she really liked it and requested that i post it on AO3, so here it is! :)
> 
> betaed by [thislittlekumquat](http://thislittlekumquat.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> **Do not repost the art in this fic**

Keith wakes up to Lance staring at him, smile already spread over his face. Keith knows that look, knows nothing good ever comes from giving into it. “No,” he says firmly, rolling over away from Lance.

“Babe!” Lance protests, “You haven’t even heard me out yet!” He shakes Keith’s shoulder, and Keith just hugs his pillow even tighter.

“It’s not morning yet,” Keith grumbles. “Let me sleep.”

“Baaabe…” Lance whines. “I haven’t even said anything.”

“You don’t have to,” Keith reminds him. “I know you well enough to know the answer already.”

“Clearly not, or you wouldn’t have said no so quickly.” Despite the argument, Keith already knows Lance is smiling. He can hear it in his voice: the barely concealed laughter, dripping with fondness Keith still doesn’t know how to handle.

He knows he’ll give into whatever Lance wants, whatever crazy idea he has in mind. Lance knows it too. This is just the game they play: Keith pretends to be irritated, Lance whines, Lance kisses up, and Keith gives in.

At this point, it’s tradition just to play along.

Lance pokes Keith’s shoulder, so light Keith wouldn’t feel it had he been wearing a shirt. “Babe,” Lance whispers.

Keith ignores him.

“Sweetie,” Lance tries again, poking Keith a little harder.

It’s not time yet.

Lance pokes him even harder, and Keith can feel Lance’s breath against his ear as Lance leans in. “Snookums.”

“Oh my god, what.” Keith thrashes around, narrowly avoiding smacking Lance in the face. His boyfriend dodges expertly, already laughing. The more ridiculous the nicknames get, the more Keith’s face turns red, so at _snookums_ he’s far closer to a lobster than he’d like to look before breakfast.

Lance cracks up at the sight of it, and Keith really…really wishes he weren’t so easy to read. “Oh man, Keith. That never gets old.”

“That’s because you’re five,” is Keith’s argument, but it’s half-hearted at best. “What do you want?” he asks, question coming out far fonder than intended.

“Look.” Lance points towards their window, and Keith’s gaze follows it, turning to see what has Lance in a tizzy before sunrise.

White flakes flurry past, the glass already frosting on the outside. Now that Keith thinks about it, it _is_ a little colder than usual. He’d hardly noticed, being under the covers with actual heater Lance McClain, but all their movements had shifted the comforter off his arms, so he can feel it now.

“Snow,” Lance announces, as if Keith hadn’t been able to see it himself.

Keith bites back his snarky retort, turning back to Lance, who is a far better sight than the snow falling outside their window. “Oh yeah,” he remembers. “This is your first time seeing snow, isn’t it?”

Lance raises his eyebrow at Keith. “I was at the Garrison a full year longer than you, Keith. It snowed there.”

Keith smacks him, though it’s half-hearted. “Shut up.” Lance just laughs. “Why are you so excited about it then?”

Lance stops laughing, staring wistfully somewhere over Keith’s shoulder. Probably back at the snow. “Because,” he breathes softly. “It’s our first snow since…”

He doesn’t have to finish his sentence for Keith to know how it ends. Since leaving Voltron. Since defeating the Galra. Since returning home as heroes. Since they started dating. (Though that one’s a bit generous of a term for what had happened. They’d kissed and then immediately moved in together on Earth, since Lance had ‘gotten used to the quiet of space.’)

Keith glances at the clock on the nightstand behind Lance, reading 5:42 AM in bright green LEDs. They don’t have to get up, don’t have anywhere to be today. So why would Keith sacrifice his warmth, tear himself out of this perfectly warm, comfortable bed – courtesy of Lance – and go outside to stand in the cold and watch the snow fall? It’s probably not even sticking yet.

But then his eyes meet Lance’s wide ones which are wordlessly begging Keith to _please go outside with me_.

He holds out for a whole five seconds longer before sighing. “Fine.” Lance pumps his blue lion plushie into the air in victory. “ _But_ ,” Keith emphasizes, just so Lance doesn’t think he’s completely giving in (he is), “we’re not going to stay out there long. And when we come back in, you’re going to let me sleep.”

Lance mock salutes him from where he’s still lying. “Yessir.” Keith rolls his eyes, but he can’t help from smiling at Lance’s antics, even all these months later. Lance leans in, kissing him on the cheek. “Best boyfriend ever,” the former blue paladin declares.

“Yeah yeah,” Keith grumbles, flushing red again. “Just get dressed.”

 

 

Keith is absolutely adorable in his winter coat, Lance swears. He’d been pouty and whiney when he’d first woken up, but despite all that, he still drags himself out of bed and gets dressed per Lance’s request. It’s one of the many thousands of things Lance loves about Keith.

Especially the hat.

“I’m plenty warm,” Keith argues. He always argues, even though he doesn’t mean it.

But Lance shakes his head, adjusting Keith’s hat so it covers his ears. “No way. It’s going to be freezing out there. Literally. It’s snowing, so it has to be freezing.”

Keith waves Lance off and adjusts the hat himself, pulling it behind his ears. He doesn’t take it off though. “What about you? You’re the one who isn’t used to the cold.”

Lance grabs his scarf out of the closet, handing its mate to Keith. They’re soft, warm, and courtesy of Hunk, so Lance has been wearing his the minute the temperature dipped below 60 degrees. “You’ll keep me warm,” Lance teases.

He loves teasing Keith like this. Mostly because there are times, like right now, that Keith turns pink all the way to the tips of his ears. Lance will never get bored of it, not for the rest of his life. And Keith, who has finally gotten better at giving affection, still has no idea how to handle it. Not Lance’s compliments, not the silly nicknames, not the thousands of times Lance tells him he loves him.

He gets so embarrassed that he leaves.

Lance follows him out the door, laughing and slipping his gloved hand into Keith’s own. Keith’s the one who intertwines their fingers and subtly pulls Lance’s arm until they’re walking so close their shoulders brush with every step.

The snow must’ve recently started to fall. A small layer sticks to the ground, but when Lance and Keith step on it, it gives easily without that satisfying crunch Lance remembers from his Garrison days. Too fresh.

Still, Lance holds out his free hand, catching snowflakes that immediately melt upon hitting his glove. He wants to feel it though, so he bites the tip of the fabric on his middle finger and pulls his hand out.

“Weren’t you the one who said it’s freezing out here?” Keith remarks, unamused.

“Shut up.”

It is freezing, but Lance doesn’t care just yet. He catches a few flakes in his hand, melting these one too before he wipes his palm on his pants and releases Keith’s hand to re-glove himself. “There,” he sasses. “Happy?”

Keith levels him with a flat look. Lance leans in and kisses him on the cheek before bounding off away from the shack. “H-hey!” Keith calls after him. “Where are you going?”

“I want to see what it looks like from up there!” Lance calls, racing up the small hill. It doesn’t give him much height, not really, but the angle is good enough for him to look out at the desert around him. A soft, obviously thin white covers the area all around them, with the red of the desert poking through where the snow hasn’t had a chance to stick properly yet.

When Lance had been growing up, he’d thought all deserts were like the Sahara in Africa. He’d thought they were as warm as his home country but drier. The concept of snow in the desert had been laughable. Then he’d gone to the Garrison.

Still, he thinks when he turns back to watch Keith slowly approach him, bundled up in the clothes Lance had forced on him, he hadn’t thought it could be this beautiful.

 

 

Lance relents after staring at the desert for a while, finally letting them go back inside. At this point, Keith’s been awake long enough that he thinks they may as well make breakfast when they go back inside. Maybe even take a nice hot shower before going back to bed.

Keith follows Lance back towards the shack – their shack, as he thinks of it now – but before they get there, Lance turns and looks back at him with a smile. “What?” Keith asks, turning to see if there’s something behind him. There isn’t.

“Nothing,” Lance says, cheeks pink from the cold. “Just…thank you for coming out.”

He can’t say no to Lance. Doesn’t Lance know that by now? No, Keith thinks. He doesn’t, because Keith always pretends he gives in, when in reality he would do it anyway. “Lance,” Keith starts, catching Lance’s hand before he can walk in. “You know I…care about you, right?”

He struggles with the word, stumbles over it in his mind even. He always does this, always tries to say it. Three words, that’s all it takes, and yet Keith can’t fill in the middle one without choking. He knows he feels it, too. That’s the worst part.

“I know,” Lance replies, smile turning soft. He pulls Keith with him, in through the door.

The temperature difference is immediately noticeable. Compared to the cold of outside, it feels like a sauna in here, even though Keith knows it’s a perfectly reasonable temperature. Still, that doesn’t stop him from shedding off everything until he’s down to his t-shirt and pants. “I’m gonna make something,” he remarks as Lance struggles to unlace the boots he insisted on buying the last time they were in town. “You want anything?”

“Yeah,” Lance replies, not looking up. “What’re you making?”

“Well…” Keith walks into the kitchen, glancing at the clock. It’s after 6:00 AM now, so he may as well give up on his dream of getting back into bed. “Full spread?” he asks, pulling open the fridge. They have enough for today, enough for tomorrow too, but they’ll need to ride into town again soon, get some more ingredients.

As if reading his mind, Lance appears behind him, draping himself over Keith’s back. “How are we doing?” he asks, peering over Keith’s shoulder into the fridge.

“We’ll need to go into town again,” Keith admits, pulling out the eggs. “But we have enough for today.”

Lance hums, stepping back to give Keith space. He used to hover more, but Keith’s cooking skills are rudimentary at best – it’s thanks to Hunk that he has any skills at all – and there was an incident with some burnt pasta that had Red nearly breaking into the shack…it was a disaster.

So after that, Lance had started keeping his distance when Keith cooks. Really, Keith doesn’t even cook that often; Lance is far better at it, and Keith _still_ can’t manage to make even a simple stir fry without burning the meat. So Keith sticks with cooking breakfast; eggs are simple enough, and he’s had to do it enough times that he can do it with minimal issues, but even then Lance watches from a distance.

“Wanna go today?” Lance asks.

Keith hums. They have enough for today, and he’d really rather not. “Tomorrow?” he suggests.

Lance laughs. “We have to actually go tomorrow, you know that right?”

“I know that,” Keith grouses.

“No hanging around in bed. No ‘please Lance, just five more minutes’,” Lance teases, his voice elevating two octaves as he makes fun of Keith’s voice.

Despite himself, Keith snorts. “I do not sound like that.”

“‘Oh Lance I just want to stay in bed all day with you, I don’t care if I starve’,” Lance continues, keeping his voice pitched far too high to sound anything like Keith.

Keith turns off the stove, eggs complete, and turns around to where Lance is still laughing at him. He walks up and places his hand on Lance’s shoulder, pulling him down so he can stand on his tip toes and kiss Lance’s forehead. Immediately, Lance’s laughter dies down, and he wraps his arm around Keith’s back.

“Cheater,” Lance complains, but his other arm comes to rest on Keith’s waist.

Keith drops down to his normal height. “How was that cheating?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Because you do it just to make me forget what I was talking about.”

 

 

They’ve had this ‘argument’ if you can even call it that a thousand times. Probably because whenever Lance teases Keith too much, Keith kisses him and Lance forgets what he was saying. “You,” he says, “are absolutely impossible.

Keith snorts again. “Breakfast is ready.”

Lance digs into the cupboards – _their_ cupboards – and pulls out two plates. They’re going to need to do the dishes too, he notes. “Anything to go with the eggs?” he asks, setting the plates down for Keith to serve them.

“If you hadn’t been there distracting me, I would’ve made toast.”

“Oh, so I was _distracting_ you now.” Lance grins. “Was it how I was standing completely out of the way?”

Keith pauses while serving the eggs, staring at Lance with an unreadable expression. “You looked good in the snow.”

Lance frowns. “I…what? We’re not outside anymore.”

“I know,” Keith remarks, ducking his head as he finishes serving the eggs. The tips of his ears are red again. “You just looked like you belong here.”

Part of Lance is offended. _As if you belong here_. He lives here! Of course he belongs here. But the other part of him catches on to what Keith means to say, to what Keith’s trying to say but can’t because he’s not the best at expressing himself, even now. So Lance does it for him. “Of course I belong here,” he tells Keith softly, taking one of the plates. “I live here.”

If possible, that just makes Keith’s ears darken. Lance privately congratulates himself on that.

“C’mon babe,” Lance encourages as he plops himself down on the couch. “Get over here and eat your single-ingredient breakfast before it gets cold.”

“You’re a terror,” Keith informs him, but he sits close enough to Lance that their thighs press together while they eat.

 

 

“So hey,” Lance says later, after they finish eating. He’s rinsing their dishes while Keith cleans up the pan. “Can we go sledding?”

Keith snorts, but Lance isn’t sure what’s so funny about that. “What?” he asks. “There’s snow.”

At that, Keith just laughs harder. Lance grabs the towel nearest to him and flicks it at Keith, catching him on his hip. Damn, he’s getting soft; he’d been aiming for Keith’s butt. “It’s a real question!”

Keith turns to him, eyebrows raised. There’s a hint of a smile on his face; Keith’s always less cranky after he’s eaten. “There’s not enough snow for us to go sledding,” Keith tells him, voice filled with restrained laughter.

“It was sticking though,” Lance argues.

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, “but the sled needs more than a quarter of an inch to slide properly. Besides, what would we slide down? The hill outside the front door?”

Lance edges closer and flicks him again, but Keith manages to dodge it this time. “I was trying to be romantic,” Lance grumbles.

“Did you want to make dirt angels too? Maybe a dirt man?” Keith teases.

Lance drops the towel and tackles him. Keith doesn’t even try to avoid him; he just sets down his pan and catches Lance around the waist when Lance shoves the two of them up against the counter. “You’re terrible,” Lance murmurs in Keith’s ear, but there’s no heat behind his words.

He wonders, sometimes, if he can ever talk to Keith without fondness in his voice anymore. Probably not. Lance presses his lips to Keith’s neck, the sensitive spot right behind his ear, and he feels the tremor that goes through Keith at that. “Since I have the upper hand,” he whispers gruffly, “I say we go out there and make _snow_ angels.”

Keith’s foot hooks him behind his ankle, and Lance’s balance is thrown off. One second he’s holding Keith against the counter, and the next, the two of them are tumbling to the ground. They land with a crash, Keith on top of him, and all the air whooshes out of Lance’s lungs.

He lies there, dumbfounded as he tries to catch his breath, and suddenly Keith bursts out laughing. Lance likes Keith’s laugh. Loves it even. Keith’s eyes crinkle shut, his mouth open in a broad grin, and he lets loose in a way that has Lance’s heart beating a thousand beats a second.

“Who has the upper hand now?” Keith asks once he gets a hold of himself, still grinning down at him.

Lance is the luckiest man alive, getting to see him like this.

“I love you,” he says.

It’s not the first time Lance has said it to Keith, and it definitely won’t be the last. But every time he does, Keith gets this flush across his cheeks that is absolutely adorable. He splutters afterwards, “h-hey, no cheating.” And it just makes Lance fall for him even harder.

He leans up and presses his lips to Keith’s, relishing the heat he can feel radiating off Keith’s face. It’s okay that Keith can’t say it back yet. Lance won’t ever pressure him into it, and Keith knows that.

Besides, Keith says it in other ways. It’s in the way he cradles Lance’s head as he returns the kiss, pressing Lance back against the floor of their kitchen. It’s in the way his other hand fists into Lance’s shirt, as if he’s trying to hold him there forever. It’s in the way he follows every deep kiss with a smaller peck, as if even a moment away from Lance is too much.

Keith says it in the little things he does every day, from learning to cook breakfast so Lance wouldn’t always have to, to washing Lance’s back in the shower when Lance is too sore to reach it himself.

Keith says it in the big things he does too, from going to Cuba to visit Lance’s family every now and then, to the way he’d taken a hit meant for Lance back when they were still fighting the war.

He says it now, when he pulls away. He gazes down at Lance with an expression so fond, there’s no way Lance could ever interpret it as anything _but_ ‘I love you’. “Let’s get changed,” Keith suggests. “I’m starting to get cold.”

 

 

They eventually make it out of the kitchen and pull on their matching sweaters, courtesy of Coran. They’re both soft, and unlike some of Coran’s earlier attempts at knitting, they’re actually wearable. The sweaters have matching socks too, though Lance’s are designed to be paw prints, and Keith’s are meant to look like his boots. Keith knows that Lance had a hand in making his; Coran may have improved under Lance’s tutelage, but he’s still no knitting pro. If there even is such a thing.

“TV?” Keith asks as Lance yawns widely.

“And hot chocolate,” Lance insists. Where he’d been all energy earlier, now he seems tired. He hangs off Keith as they shuffle through the kitchen, fumbling to make the hot chocolate.

The dishes need to be washed, Keith notes as he pulls out a single mug. “We’re going to have to share,” Keith tells him, and Lance hums noncommittally.

Drink made, they shuffle back into the living room, but before Keith can make it to the couch, Lance tugs him down onto the bean bag chair. It’s a ridiculous addition to their house, but it’s one Lance had insisted on. Keith still doesn’t know why, but the one they have is far more luxurious than he would’ve expected.

Still far too small to fit two people.

Keith sets the hot chocolate aside as Lance rearranges them so Lance is lying in Keith’s lap. “The couch would be more comfortable,” Keith insists.

“No,” Lance argues, eyes already closed. He has an amazing ability to go from rapid movement to fast asleep in record time. It’s a skill Keith wishes he could steal.

“Alright,” Keith relents holding onto Lance so he won’t tumble onto the floor. Lance’s grip around the back of his neck loosens, but he doesn’t relinquish it completely. His breathing is already smoothing out, and Keith has to wonder how long he’d been awake watching the snow, waiting for Keith to wake up.

Keith leans down and presses his lips to Lance’s forehead. “Sleep well,” he whispers against Lance’s skin.

Outside, the sun begins to rise.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the art and you want to reblog it, the links are here:  
> [lance and keef on the bean bag](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/post/165128837230/some-warm-and-fuzzy-autumn-klance-dont), [lance in bed with a lion plushie](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/post/165559341295/sleepy-boy-and-a-lion-plush-blue-or-red), [forehead kiss and happy keef](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/post/167931235560/sketches-from-the-stream-dont-repost-to), [keef all bundled](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/post/167537370195/more-doodles-from-todays-stream-dont-repost), [lance all bundled](http://jilli-bean.tumblr.com/post/166191507605/late-inktober-day-7-my-boy-dont-repost)
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://rinthegreat.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/rinthegreat_ao3) to see what i'm working on and how to support me!


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